Halo: Honor Bound
by SloMoKomodo
Summary: The Covenant lays waste to yet another UNSC colony world, forging an ODST from the vitrifying heat of their plasma. When the UNSC needs the planet of New Bratislava reclaimed, this soldier of revenge is sent feet-first into a hell all too real. Rated M for coarse language and graphic descriptions of violence.


Chapter One

A sudden, violent explosion from the gut of the space tether brought Kenny out of his shock-induced paralysis. "MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!" Screamed the Sergeant. Debris, flame, and terror rained onto them. He glanced around, and saw his squad stumbling for a small, raised ridge at the edge of a forest. Kenny was so focused on reaching the illusory safety of the woods that Corporal Anderson's thundering warning of _Banshee!_ was little more than a whisper. The world slowed. Kenny heard a faint whir that rapidly became a wail. He tried to raise his head and eyes, but he felt like every inch of his face was constrained in a stasis field. After an eternity, he managed to look skyward, only to see the Type-26 Ground Support Aircraft screaming away, leaving a glistening emerald globule soaring towards the Marines. A split second later, Kenny found himself spinning through the air, his ears ringing and head in a cloud. For a moment, he saw his girlfriend, Tammy, smiling at him. He was peaceful. He smiled back. _Thud_. Kenny pushed himself up out of the dirt, and desperately looked around. _Oh, my god. My entire squad. Everyone's dead. Sarge. Anderson. Everyone. _"Come on, you bastard! _Move your ass_, THAT'S AN ORDER, MARINE!" Another Corporal, Karakov, bellowed at him. He and another private were the only apparent survivors of the strafing run. The three of them ran the remaining metres and scrambled up the small cliff. Karakov looked at them, panting. "Jesus Chri-" a stream of ionized hydrogen burned through his head at a fraction of the speed of light. "Sniper! Get the _FUCK DOWN!_" The other private screamed. Kenny dove onto his stomach, only to see the trooper riddled with needles, and then explode in a hail of gore from the inside out. Kenny didn't have time to register any emotion; any thought. An electric blur caught his eye. A sickeningly familiar hiss told him that unless he moved his torn and beaten body, he would have his flesh boiled off his bones in the blast of a plasma grenade. He scrambled up and jumped as far as he could. BAM! Kenny felt heat and pressure wash over him.

He must've lain there for years. Was he dead? All he could see was white, and all he could hear was deafening silence. He tried to move. A sharp, brutal pain shot through his right arm. His shooting arm. He tasted blood in his mouth, and felt shards of tooth under his tongue. The white faded into a smoldering sky; Seraph fighters pursued by Longswords. The silent ringing in his ears melted into the agitated chatter of a Grunt Major. Kenny studied the curious, bulbous creature in its crimson armor. It clutched an empty Needler in one hand, and a primed plasma grenade in the other. This little bastard had killed the private, and now he was going to kill him. This little thing. Christ, it looked like a goddamned _rat_. And this fucker had just been responsible for the death of a tough-as-nails marine. Kenny laughed audibly as he haphazardly raised his M7 Submachine gun with his left arm, and popped the Unggoy with half a clip. The creature screeched as its cyan blood poured out of its wounds. The dropped plasma grenade hummed for a couple seconds, then detonated, sending the Grunt flying like some ridiculous firework as its methane breathing system exploded in a ball of flame. What a coincidence. The methane burned blue, just like their blood. How fitting.

Kenny wanted nothing more than to sit there, at peace, grinning and thinking of jokes from his tween years. Somehow, the more adult part of him remembered the sniper that was still out there, looking for him. Wanting to kill him and every other human in existence. Kenny dragged himself into the woods, giggling in shell-shock. Remember when humans fought each other? The Allies fought the Axis? NATO fought Al Qaeda? The UNSC fought the Insurrectionists? When _he _fought the Insurrectionists? It somehow seemed funny to him, even though now he was trying desperately to survive against midget aliens commanded by dinosaur samurai that shot gorgeous hues of pink and green at them. He didn't hear the Pelican that landed when the LZ had been cleared. Next thing he knew, he was being evacuated off-world; told he was the only Marine who had survived the Covenant assault on the entire Continent.

Chapter Two

"_Helljumper, helljumper, where you been?"_ Kenny felt the sweat roll off his face. He swivelled his eyes down to his right arm, looking at the massive scar. He thought of his squad. Clarkson. Tony "Magyar" Bakos. Stenner. Ryan, the private whose blood he wore the day the Covenant attacked Petra IX. The private he avenged. Czerpinski. He had each and every one of their names tattooed on his back. Above them, He had his squad's callsign, "Granite". Below, their motto: "_Honor Bound"_. "_Feet first into Hell and back again! When I die please bury me deep! Fix my MA5 down by my feet!"_

Chapter Three

"Move, ladies!" the Gunnery Sergeant boomed. "SOEIVs! NOW!" AntiSat fire tore past the _Geronimo_. Despite the commotion, the now-Lance Corporal Kenny overheard one of the radio operators reveal that the battlegroup's flagship, the UNSC _Tokugawa_, had been destroyed by Type-38 Anti-Aircraft Cannons. The remaining ships had to take immediate evasive action. "This is what we've trained for, Marines!" someone said. Kenny strapped himself into his Pod. Over the video comms Kenny studied his comrades. Some were visibly nervous. Some looked like statues in their grey ODST BDU. This was going to be one turbulent drop. Kenny felt his stomach lurch as their SOEIVs were cannoned out of the besieged _Stalwart_-Class Light Frigate. Hitting the atmosphere felt like being hit with a Gravity Hammer. Kenny struggled to catch his breath as he had the wind knocked out of him. Funny. This was just _air_. Maybe he should've been a philosopher.

The ODSTs' situation went from precarious to downright shitty in a matter of seconds. While it would be inefficient to use Tyrants against drop pods, Kenny knew, when he saw the Green Fuel Rods from AA Wraiths, he wondered if the secrecy of their operation had been compromised. There was not much he could do in a drop pod. Barely any evasive maneuvers. No tactical, split-second reactions that could be drilled in by training. He could just sit and wait. Kenny saw one of the SOEIVs in front of him connect with a fuel rod and careen off course in an eruption of verdant flame. In the year-long seconds that followed, Kenny endured formerly open comms channels fade into static and heard the pained gurgles of other ODSTs burning alive. SMASH! Kenny's pod impacted the ground, and the hatch blew open.

Kenny gripped his MA5B assault rifle as he sprinted forward. Looking up, he saw more streaks of light slash through the sky. That was their mission. Eliminate Covenant armor and Anti-Air defenses to allow the UNSC to land conventional forces. They were going to retake the now Covenant-held planet of New Bratislava. The only reason it hadn't been glassed in the first battle was supposedly because the Covies wanted some artifact for their religion. Apparently HIGHCOM wanted it too. Kenny didn't care. Orders were orders, and any opportunity he got to make the Covenant bleed he took greedily and without question.

The rest of his fireteam soon caught up with him. Together, they quickly disposed of the first defensive waves the Covenant had sent them. Nothing more than a few low-ranking Grunts and Jackals. They charged up a muddy slope unchallenged. That was strange. For such high-value targets, wouldn't the Covenant deploy a more significant challenge? These guns were the only thing keeping the UNSC from counterattacking. They couldn't be more than two klicks away.

As they jogged as fast as their legs could carry them, Kenny realized he'd spoken too soon. Far too soon, as it turned out. The ground rumbled under their massive weight. Kenny and his fireteam stopped dead and dumbstruck as two gargantuan hunters lumbered in their direction. Through the translation software in his helmet, Kenny heard them curse the "imps" they had been sent to fight. This was a good sign. They a reputation even among Covenant heavy infantry for being from the depths of Hell. _"__Helljumper". Even UNSC thinks that's our home_.

Despite their various nicknames, courage was a hard thing to muster in the face of two enraged hunters. As they stood in the mud, frozen with fear, the Gunnery Sergeant decided to act his rank and show his men that these beasts were not invulnerable. Charging forward with his shotgun held tight and a desperate cry of "_Axios!"_, he ran forward into the Mgalekgolo on the right.

The Gunnery Sergeant flew through the air like a ragdoll, with a gash that ran from his left femur to his right collarbone, spitting blood and mangled organs. Somehow, the rest of the fireteam got over the shock of seeing their CO torn in two and engaged the hunters. Kenny primed a captured plasma grenade and hurled it at the hunter who had killed the Sergeant. _Fuck_. It stuck to the hunter's oversized shield. Those things were made of the same shit as the armor on Covie capital ships. The explosive popped harmlessly like a shattered Christmas light. All Kenny had done was drawn its attention. A death sentence, for sure. Kenny checked the lower left-hand corner of his HUD. He had two Fragmentation Grenades left. Kenny pulled the pin on one and purposefully tossed it _under_ the behemoth's shield. The hunter staggered back from the explosion. Kenny seized the opportunity to dive onto the dead Sergeant's shotgun. Staggering back to his feet, Kenny kept his head down as he maneuvered behind the cumbersome hunter. _CRACK! CRACK!_ Kenny blasted the armor plating off the hunter's back. Sidestepping a backwards swing, he pulled the pin on his last grenade and plunged it into the hunter's soft, fleshy body, which was really just a colony of hundreds of worms. Kenny backed up as he saw the hunter thrash and roar with rage, only to have its back blown out in a rain of orange blood. He had done it. He had killed the hunter.

Kenny wasn't out of the woods yet. He had learned while training to be an ODST that hunters were almost always deployed in pairs, with a bond brother. If one saw the other killed, it would enter into a rage, rampaging until the entire landscape was destroyed. Terrified, he looked up, only to see his worst fears confirmed. The remaining hunter focused all its attention on him. The Full Metal Jacket-Armor Piercing rounds fired by his fellow jarheads clinked harmlessly off the hunter's frame. The raging leviathan thundered toward him. The shotgun wouldn't be any use here. He had no grenades left. In desperation, he looked down and saw the assault cannon on the hunter he had just killed. Those things were grafted onto hunters, like their shields and armor. Out of options, his veins exploding with courage and adrenaline, he reached _into_ the hunter's arm, between the eel-like beings that composed the appendage, and groped for the oversized trigger. Even using both arms, he could barely lift the hulking weapon. He squeezed one round off. It impacted the shield, barely slowing the hunter's advance. He would have to time this perfectly. He started charging another shot, and before he knew it, the beast was right in front of him, roaring and raising its shield to tear him limb-from-limb. At that moment, the hunter had exposed its fleshy stomach. In its rage, it had revealed its weakness. Kenny unleashed another boiling sphere of energy. It smashed into the Hunter's torso. It groaned in pain as it stumbled backward. The scent of burnt flesh was unmistakable. It let out a last, defeated gurgle before slumping over backward.

Kenny looked up. His entire team was staring at him in sheer disbelief. Although the remaining members of his unit were all the same rank, there was a general feeling in the air that Kenny had _most definitely_ established himself as team leader. He looked up to a rocky cliff above them. He saw an Unggoy man a Type-52 Directed Energy Support Weapon; UNSC designation for a plasma cannon. "Let's move, Helljumpers!" Kenny said. He truly did love that nickname.

Chapter Four

The Team's designated marksman, Lance Corporal Jameson, raised his sniper rifle, attempting to target the gunner of that plasma cannon. Just as he was about to squeeze trigger, he let out a gasp as he was hoisted into the air. He looked like he was floating, with a burning hole in his chest. "Spread out, marines! Elite Zealot!" Kenny ordered. If the fireteam thought the hunters were bad, at least they could _see_ them. This zealot was armed with active camouflage and an energy sword. The marines spread outwards from Jameson's corpse in a circle. "Activate VISR! This bastard will be outlined in orange!"

Kenny raised his assault rifle. While this zealot's energy shields were more powerful than that of standard elites, the shotgun would be too risky to use in the proximity of an energy sword. The ODSTs needed to keep their distance. Unfortunately, MA5Bs were notoriously inaccurate. They would have to burst-fire their weapons all together, and hope that their combined firepower would be enough to kill the Elite. With their long legs and massive stride, they would be in your face faster than you'd expect. All the more lethal with an energy sword. Each of the ODSTs backed up, peppering the zealot with fire. Of course, the squid-head chose Kenny to charge at. Maybe it had decided he was team leader and a priority target. Kenny ran backwards as fast as he could. That made hitting his target all the more difficult. The Sangheili's shields weren't even down by the time it reached him. It stabbed at him with its sword, but Kenny managed to dodge the swing. He drew his Combat Knife and turned to face his foe. At that moment, he saw the elite stumble as its energy shield was depleted. It turned its head to roar at the ODSTs. A tactical mistake which Kenny could not afford to miss. He rolled forward, and quickly got to his feet. The Elite still had its back to him. With its shields down, Kenny jumped onto its back and buried his blade into the back its head. He clambered off the dead zealot, and relieved its corpse of the active camo module and its energy sword. Kenny loved using those things. Purportedly in Elite Culture, they only allowed the "worthy" to wield swords. Low-ranking hinge-heads, such as Elite Minors, were not allowed to carry these "holy" weapons. Imagine what those bastards thought when he, an "unclean" human, picked one up and proceeded to decimate entire Covenant lances.

Kenny gave the hand-sign for "move up". They had to eliminate the plasma cannon, and proceed to engage the Covenant heavy armor. They had yet to even truly begin their objective. Kenny looked back at the remaining three members of his fireteam. They couldn't afford to lose anyone else. "Move up that hill; evasive maneuvers!"

With the Zealot dead, the Grunt didn't have to worry about friendly fire. It immediately opened up on the ODSTs. With his heart pounding, Kenny raced up the hill. He thought they were going to make it, only to see one of his marines eat a salvo of plasma in the chest. Kenny slowed down and lowered his rifle. _No…_ The sizzling, popping sounds of boiling flesh made his skin crawl. _We can't afford to lose him… _Kenny was out of range to use any weapon he had on hand: Assault Rifle, shotty, knife, and energy sword (Not to mention, superheated plasma plus a a methane tank is suicide). Kenny remembered he now had the Active camo.

Sending a signal to the alien equipment courtesy of ONI's cutting edge technology, Kenny was enveloped in a shroud of light-bending energy, leaving nothing but footprints. The speakers in his helmets fed the horrified chatter of the grunt into his ears. "Covering fire!" Kenny cried. His remaining two squadmates peppered the ridge on which the plasma cannon rested, sending splashes of mud into the air and forcing the Unggoy to take cover.

Sprinting the remainder of the way, Kenny leapt onto the Covenant troop and buried his combat knife into the confused creature's throat, spewing cobalt blood upon his BDU. He was about to deactivate his active camo when he saw two Covenant armored vehicles headed his way. _Shit…_

"Bielewicz, Copperson, stay low, hug the ridgeline!" Kenny moved over to the Plasma Cannon and gripped its controls. Swivelling it on its anti-gravity mount, Kenny repositioned it to face the oncoming armor. There was one Deep Purple Spectre, and another ruby-colored Revenant. Both were fully manned; the Revenant had one driver and one passenger. Activating his built-in telescope, Kenny saw the passenger elite was carrying a deadly Plasma Launcher. The Class-2 Medium Plasma Mortar resting atop the gun carriage was no joke, either. While not nearly the strength of the Type-26's, it could send even armored infantry flying into a thousand charred pieces. Glancing to the right, Kenny saw the rapidly approaching Spectre. This was more of a threat. Crewed by Sangheili Ultras, with a Class-1 Light Plasma Cannon as its primary armament, it was the Covenant's "big brother" equivalent to the tried and true UNSC Warthog. This is the crucial moment, in the heat of war.

Kenny opened fire as sapphire plasma rounds were magnetically guided at near the speed of light towards their targets. The metal on the vehicles heated and melted in response to the strafing. Both the Spectre and Revenant returned fire, sending Kenny sprinting away as the ground behind him was vitrified into glass. One of the Ultras sent a full clip of Concussion Rifle shot downrange, missing Kenny but with their explosive force sending him flying. He would've blacked out if it weren't for his adrenaline working in tandem with his pressurized suit. He was by no means out of the woods yet. With his active camouflage out of charge and out of operations thanks to a round of plasma, Kenny stared as four globules arced towards him. That damned Plasma Launcher has a lock on him. Despite being teasingly slow, Kenny knew it was an optical illusion. He couldn't outrun them. Or dodge them, for that matter. It seemed he would have to accept his fate. Just then, he remembered what he was carrying. Gripping the Type-1 Energy Sword in his hand, he activated it and watched as the plasma followed the magnetic lines emitted by the weapon. As the Plasma Launcher fire neared, Kenny swung with all his hope.

The globules lost their lock as the magnetic interference from the sword destroyed their tracking mechanism. Also caught in the sword's magnetism, the globules were captured on the tip of the sword. _Plasma capture? If only the Navy could implement this into our ships._ Turning off the sword, the now unrestrained plasma raced forward. A quick reactivation saved him from a salvo of cannon fire from the Spectre, whose driver was unable to evade the redirected plasma launcher fire. The balls stuck to his vehicle like plasma grenades, and detonated, emitting a blinding blue, purple, and black explosion. Kenny's visor polarized violently as he shielded his face.

The Revenant was still standing. As the driver prepared to fire the mortar, it too erupted in flame. The surviving lone Sangheili stumbled from the burning wreckage, but the remaining percentage of his shield was wiped out and he collapsed, his bullet-ridden body squirting litres of purple blood. A squad of four ODSTs emerged from behind the Revenant. One had a rocket launcher, while the others were a mix of Assault Rifle and Submachine Gun. Glancing left, Kenny saw Bielewicz and Copperson emerge from cover. One of the marines extended his hand.

"Sergeant Alejandro Martinez, 28th ODST platoon."


End file.
